James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849.
Tensions between pro- and anti-slave settlers in the conquered west (not limited to Bleeding Kansas) and the bid to constitute newfound states as either free or slave – and thus for control of the Senate – set the stage for the Civil War, considered a direct consequence of Polk's presidency. ==Early life== James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in a log cabin in Pineville, North Carolina.
Polk, Jacksonian, 1795–1843 (1957) vol 1 online; and James K.
Rawley's American National Biography article. In 1803, Ezekiel Polk led four of his adult children and their families to the Duck River area in what is now Maury County, Tennessee; Samuel Polk and his family followed in 1806.
Rawley's American National Biography article. In 1803, Ezekiel Polk led four of his adult children and their families to the Duck River area in what is now Maury County, Tennessee; Samuel Polk and his family followed in 1806.
His father offered to bring him into one of his businesses, but he wanted an education and enrolled at a Presbyterian academy in 1813.
He became a member of the Zion Church near his home in 1813 and enrolled in the Zion Church Academy.
He then entered Bradley Academy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he proved a promising student. In January 1816, Polk was admitted into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a second-semester sophomore.
Polk graduated with honors in May 1818. After graduation, Polk returned to Nashville, Tennessee to study law under renowned trial attorney Felix Grundy, who became his first mentor.
Since the signing of the Treaty of 1818, the Oregon Country had been under the joint occupation and control of the United Kingdom and the United States.
In his annual message to Congress in December 1845, Polk requested approval of giving Britain a one-year notice (as required in the Treaty of 1818) of his intention to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon.
On September 20, 1819, he was elected clerk of the Tennessee State Senate, which then sat in Murfreesboro and to which Grundy had been elected.
He opened an office in Maury County and was successful as a lawyer, due largely to the many cases arising from the Panic of 1819, a severe depression.
By treaty, Russia had waived any claim south of the southern border of Alaska, which it possessed until 1867, and Spain, which claimed the Pacific Coast to the 42nd parallel, ceded any claims it might have north of that to the United States under the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819.
In June 1820, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar, and his first case was to defend his father against a public fighting charge; he secured his release for a one-dollar fine.
He was re-elected clerk in 1821 without opposition, and continued to serve until 1822.
This was just before Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821.
He was re-elected clerk in 1821 without opposition, and continued to serve until 1822.
His law practice subsidized his political career. ==Early political career== ===Tennessee state legislator=== By the time the legislature adjourned its session in September 1822, Polk was determined to be a candidate for the Tennessee House of Representatives.
People liked Polk's oratory, which earned him the nickname "Napoleon of the Stump." At the polls, where Polk provided alcoholic refreshments for his voters, he defeated incumbent William Yancey. Beginning in early 1822, Polk courted Sarah Childress—they were engaged the following year and married on January 1, 1824, in Murfreesboro.
The election was in August 1823, almost a year away, allowing him ample time for campaigning.
senator in 1823 (until 1913, legislators, not the people, elected senators), Jackson's name was placed in nomination.
In that message, he quoted from the Monroe Doctrine to denote America's intention of keeping European powers out, the first significant use of it since its origin in 1823.
People liked Polk's oratory, which earned him the nickname "Napoleon of the Stump." At the polls, where Polk provided alcoholic refreshments for his voters, he defeated incumbent William Yancey. Beginning in early 1822, Polk courted Sarah Childress—they were engaged the following year and married on January 1, 1824, in Murfreesboro.
Jackson was a family friend to both the Polks and the Childresses—there is evidence Sarah Polk and her siblings called him "Uncle Andrew"—and James Polk quickly came to support his presidential ambitions for 1824.
Polk's political career was as dependent on Jackson as his nickname implied. In the 1824 United States presidential election, Jackson got the most electoral votes (he also led in the popular vote) but as he did not receive a majority in the Electoral College, the election was thrown into the U.S.
Polk had in August 1824 declared his candidacy for the following year's election to the House of Representatives from Tennessee's 6th congressional district.
for Congress's regular session in December 1825, he roomed in Benjamin Burch's boarding house with other Tennessee representatives, including Sam Houston.
Polk made his first major speech on March 13, 1826, in which he said that the Electoral College should be abolished and that the president should be elected by popular vote.
Sarah Polk remained at home in Columbia during her husband's first year in Congress, but accompanied him to Washington beginning in December 1826; she assisted him with his correspondence and came to hear James's speeches. Polk won re-election in 1827 and continued to oppose the Adams administration.
Sarah Polk remained at home in Columbia during her husband's first year in Congress, but accompanied him to Washington beginning in December 1826; she assisted him with his correspondence and came to hear James's speeches. Polk won re-election in 1827 and continued to oppose the Adams administration.
His father, Samuel Polk, in 1827 left Polk more than 8,000 acres (32 km2) of land and divided about 53 slaves among his widow and children in his will.
He remained in close touch with Jackson, and when Jackson ran for president in 1828, Polk was a corresponding advisor on his campaign.
Working on Jackson's behalf, Polk successfully opposed federally-funded "internal improvements" such as a proposed Buffalo-to-New Orleans road, and he was pleased by Jackson's Maysville Road veto in May 1830, when Jackson blocked a bill to finance a road extension entirely within one state, Kentucky, deeming it unconstitutional.
In this regard he followed his hero Jackson, who had vetoed the Maysville Road Bill in 1830 on similar grounds. Opposed by conviction to Federal funding for internal improvements, Polk stood strongly against all such bills.
In 1831, he became an absentee cotton planter, sending slaves to clear plantation land that his father had left him near Somerville, Tennessee.
He occasionally visited—for example, he spent much of April 1844 on his Mississippi plantation, right before the Democratic convention. Adding to the inherited slaves, in 1831, Polk purchased five more, mostly buying them in Kentucky, and expending $1,870; the youngest had a recorded age of 11.
The bill passed Congress in 1832, but Jackson vetoed it and Congress failed to override the veto.
Jackson's action was highly controversial in Washington but had considerable public support, and he won easy re-election in 1832. Like many Southerners, Polk favored low tariffs on imported goods, and initially sympathized with John C.
Calhoun's opposition to the Tariff of Abominations during the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833, but came over to Jackson's side as Calhoun moved towards advocating secession.
Ninety percent of Tennessee voters had supported Jackson in 1832, but many in the state disliked the destruction of the Second Bank, or were unwilling to support Van Buren. As Speaker of the House, Polk worked for the policies of Jackson and later Van Buren.
The matter was settled by Congress passing a compromise tariff. ===Ways and Means Chair and Speaker of the House=== In December 1833, after being elected to a fifth consecutive term, Polk, with Jackson's backing, became the chairman of Ways and Means, a powerful position in the House.
Biles's illness in 1833 resulted in Polk replacing him with Ephraim Beanland, who tightened discipline and increased work.
In April 1834, the Ways and Means Committee reported a bill to regulate state deposit banks, which, when passed, enabled Jackson to deposit funds in pet banks, and Polk got legislation passed to allow the sale of the government's stock in the Second Bank. In June 1834, Speaker of the House Andrew Stevenson resigned from Congress to become Minister to the United Kingdom.
Between 1834 and 1835, he bought five more, aged from 2 to 37, the youngest a granddaughter of the oldest.
After serving as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he became Speaker of the House in 1835, the only president to have been speaker.
Jackson called in political debts to try to get Polk elected Speaker of the House at the start of the next Congress in December 1835, assuring Polk in a letter he meant him to burn that New England would support him for speaker.
After seven terms in the House, two as speaker, he announced that he would not seek re-election, choosing instead to run for Governor of Tennessee in the 1839 election. ===Governor of Tennessee=== In 1835, the Democrats had lost the governorship of Tennessee for the first time in their history, and Polk decided to return home to help the party.
Between 1834 and 1835, he bought five more, aged from 2 to 37, the youngest a granddaughter of the oldest.
Polk, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, conducted investigations of the Second Bank, and though the committee voted for a bill to renew the bank's charter (scheduled to expire in 1836), Polk issued a strong minority report condemning the bank.
Leonard in his book on Polk, "by 1836, while serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Polk approached the zenith of his congressional career.
In the 1836 presidential election, Vice President Martin Van Buren, Jackson's chosen successor, defeated multiple Whig candidates, including Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White.
Van Buren and Polk faced pressure to rescind the Specie Circular, Jackson's 1836 order that payment for government lands be in gold and silver.
The Republic of Texas had successfully revolted against Mexico in 1836.
The two major issues during Polk's speakership were slavery and, after the Panic of 1837, the economy.
The economic downturn cost the Democrats seats, so that when he faced re-election as Speaker of the House in December 1837, he won by only 13 votes, and he foresaw defeat in 1839.
Polk's tenure was hindered by the continuing nationwide economic crisis that had followed the Panic of 1837 and which had caused Van Buren to lose the 1840 election. Encouraged by the success of Harrison's campaign, the Whigs ran a freshman legislator from frontier Wilson County, James C.
The former president faced opposition from Southerners who feared his views on slavery, while his handling of the Panic of 1837—he had refused to rescind the Specie Circular—aroused opposition from some in the West (today's Midwest) who believed his hard money policies had hurt their section of the country.
Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee; he won in 1839 but lost in 1841 and 1843.
The economic downturn cost the Democrats seats, so that when he faced re-election as Speaker of the House in December 1837, he won by only 13 votes, and he foresaw defeat in 1839.
After seven terms in the House, two as speaker, he announced that he would not seek re-election, choosing instead to run for Governor of Tennessee in the 1839 election. ===Governor of Tennessee=== In 1835, the Democrats had lost the governorship of Tennessee for the first time in their history, and Polk decided to return home to help the party.
On Election Day, August 1, 1839, Polk defeated Cannon, 54,102 to 51,396, as the Democrats recaptured the state legislature and won back three congressional seats in Tennessee. Tennessee's governor had limited power—there was no gubernatorial veto, and the small size of the state government limited any political patronage.
From the start of 1839, Polk, having bought out his brother-in-law, owned all of the Mississippi plantations, and ran it on a mostly absentee basis for the rest of his life.
In 1839, he bought eight slaves from his brother William at a cost of $5,600.
His replacement was discharged after a year for being too indulgent; the next died of dysentery in 1839.
It eventually passed in 1840. Using his thorough grasp of the House's rules, Polk attempted to bring greater order to its proceedings.
But Polk saw the office as a springboard for his national ambitions, seeking to be nominated as Van Buren's vice presidential running mate at the 1840 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore in May.
In the 1840 election, Polk received one vote from a faithless elector in the electoral college's vote for U.S.
Polk's tenure was hindered by the continuing nationwide economic crisis that had followed the Panic of 1837 and which had caused Van Buren to lose the 1840 election. Encouraged by the success of Harrison's campaign, the Whigs ran a freshman legislator from frontier Wilson County, James C.
Polk and Scott already knew and disliked each other: the President made the appointment despite the fact that Scott had sought his party's presidential nomination for the 1840 election.
The issue of slavery became increasingly polarizing during the 1840s, and Polk's expansionary policies increased its divisiveness.
Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee; he won in 1839 but lost in 1841 and 1843.
Harrison's death after a month in office in 1841 left the presidency to Vice President John Tyler, who soon broke with the Whigs. Polk's three major programs during his governorship; regulating state banks, implementing state internal improvements, and improving education all failed to win the approval of the legislature.
Jones against Polk in 1841.
On election day in August 1841, Polk was defeated by 3,000 votes, the first time he had been beaten at the polls.
In September, a delegation of Whigs from nearby Giles County came to Columbia, armed with specific questions on Polk's views regarding the current tariff, the Whig-passed Tariff of 1842, and with the stated intent of remaining in Columbia until they got answers.
Calhoun wanted the Globe dissolved, and that Polk would act against the 1842 tariff and promote Texas annexation.
Polk signed the Walker Tariff into law, substantially reducing the rates that had been set by the Tariff of 1842.
Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee; he won in 1839 but lost in 1841 and 1843.
Polk returned to Columbia and the practice of law and prepared for a rematch against Jones in 1843, but though the new governor took less of a joking tone, it made little difference to the outcome, as Polk was beaten again, this time by 3,833 votes.
Polk, Continentalist, 1843–1846.
He was a dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1844; he entered his party's convention as a potential nominee for vice president but emerged as a compromise to head the ticket when no presidential candidate could secure the necessary two-thirds majority.
In the wake of his second statewide defeat in three years, Polk faced an uncertain political future. ==Election of 1844== ===Democratic nomination=== Despite his loss, Polk was determined to become the next vice president of the United States, seeing it as a path to the presidency.
Van Buren was the frontrunner for the 1844 Democratic nomination, and Polk engaged in a careful campaign to become his running mate.
A Texas not in the United States would also stand in the way of what was deemed America's Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent. Clay was nominated for president by acclamation at the April 1844 Whig National Convention, with New Jersey's Theodore Frelinghuysen his running mate.
Jackson met with Polk at the Hermitage on May 13, 1844, and explained to his visitor that only an expansionist from the South or Southwest could be elected—and, in his view, Polk had the best chance.
Nevertheless, because of the opposition to Van Buren by expansionists in the West and South, Polk's key lieutenant at the 1844 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, Gideon Johnson Pillow, believed Polk could emerge as a compromise candidate.
Polk was one of the few major Democrats to have declared for the annexation of Texas. The convention opened on May 27, 1844.
This was not true, though not known at the time; by then he had bought over thirty slaves, both from relatives and others, mainly for the purpose of procuring labor for his Mississippi cotton plantation. There was no uniform election day in 1844; states voted between November 1 and 12.
But when the new British minister in Washington, Richard Pakenham arrived in 1844 prepared to follow up, he found that many Americans desired the entire territory.
Oregon had not been a major issue in the 1844 election.
Supreme Court: The 1844 death of Justice Henry Baldwin left a vacant place on the Supreme Court, but Tyler had been unable to get the Senate to confirm a nominee.
The 1848 Whig National Convention nominated Zachary Taylor for president and former congressman Millard Fillmore of New York for vice president. New York Democrats remained bitter because of what they deemed shabby treatment of Van Buren in 1844, and the former president had drifted from the party in the years since.
He occasionally visited—for example, he spent much of April 1844 on his Mississippi plantation, right before the Democratic convention. Adding to the inherited slaves, in 1831, Polk purchased five more, mostly buying them in Kentucky, and expending $1,870; the youngest had a recorded age of 11.
Discusses the election of 1844.
Polk Presidents of the United States Second Party System Speakers of the United States House of Representatives Tennessee Democrats Tennessee lawyers Tennessee Jacksonians Candidates in the 1844 United States presidential election 1840 United States vice-presidential candidates University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni 19th-century diarists American nationalists
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849.
Polk's choices met with the approval of Andrew Jackson, whom Polk met with in January 1845 for the last time, as Jackson died that June. Tyler's last Navy Secretary, John Y.
On his final evening in office, March 3, 1845, Tyler offered annexation to Texas according to the terms of the resolution. Even before his inauguration, Polk wrote to Cave Johnson, "I intend to be President of the U.S." He would gain a reputation as a hard worker, spending ten to twelve hours at his desk, and rarely leaving Washington.
I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than intrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great." When he took office on March 4, 1845, Polk, at 49, became the youngest president to that point.
However, the heavy influx of settlers, mostly American, to the Oregon Country in 1845, and the rising spirit of expansionism in the United States as Texas and Oregon seized the public's eye, made a treaty with Britain more urgent.
In his annual message to Congress in December 1845, Polk requested approval of giving Britain a one-year notice (as required in the Treaty of 1818) of his intention to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon.
Britain had offered to work a deal whereby Texas would gain Mexican recognition in exchange for a pledge never to annex itself to another country, but after consideration, the influential former president, Sam Houston, rejected it, as did the Texas Congress. In July 1845, a convention ratified annexation, and thereafter voters approved it.
In December 1845, Polk signed a resolution annexing Texas, and it became the 28th state.
Mexico had broken diplomatic relations with the United States on passage of the joint resolution in March 1845; annexation increased tensions with that nation, which had never recognized Texan independence. ====Mexican-American War==== =====Road to war===== Following the Texan ratification of annexation in 1845, both Mexicans and Americans saw conflict as a likely possibility.
In late 1845, Polk sent diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to purchase New Mexico and California for $30 million, as well as securing Mexico's agreement to a Rio Grande border.
Slidell arrived in Mexico City in December 1845.
In 1845, Polk, fearful of French or British intervention, had sent Lieutenant Archibald H.
Polk made clear his opposition to a national bank in his inaugural address, and in his first annual message to Congress in December 1845, he called for the government to keep its funds itself.
As Polk attempted to find his way through the minefield of Pennsylvania politics, a second position on the high court became vacant with the death, in September 1845, of Justice Joseph Story; his replacement was expected to come from his native New England.
Because Story's death had occurred while the Senate was not in session, Polk was able to make a recess appointment, choosing Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, and when the Senate reconvened in December 1845, Woodbury was confirmed.
Others followed, and it was not until 1845 that Polk found a satisfactory overseer, John Mairs, who remained the rest of Polk's life and was still working at the plantation for Sarah Polk in 1860 when the widow sold a half-share in many of her slaves.
Polk: A Political Biography to the End of a Career, 1845–1849.
Polk: The Diary of a President, 1845–1849: Covering the Mexican War, the Acquisition of Oregon, and the Conquest of California and the Southwest.
Polk During His Presidency, 1845–1849 edited by Milo Milton Quaife, 4 vols.
He secured a substantial reduction of tariff rates with the Walker tariff of 1846.
One reshuffle was required in 1846 when Bancroft, who wanted a diplomatic posting, became U.S.
After much debate, Congress eventually passed the resolution in April 1846, attaching its hope that the dispute would be settled amicably. When the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, learned of the proposal rejected by Pakenham, Aberdeen asked the United States to re-open negotiations, but Polk was unwilling unless a proposal was made by the British.
In February 1846, Polk allowed Buchanan to inform Louis McLane, the American ambassador to Britain, that Polk's administration would look favorably on a British proposal to divide the continent at the 49th parallel.
In June 1846, Pakenham presented an offer to the Polk administration, calling for a boundary line at the 49th parallel, with the exception that Britain would retain all of Vancouver Island, and there would be limited navigation rights for British subjects on the Columbia River until the expiration of the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1859.
On January 13, 1846, Polk ordered Taylor to proceed to the Rio Grande, though it took him time to prepare for the march.
Polk was convinced that sending Taylor to the Nueces Strip would provoke war; even if it did not, he was prepared to have Congress declare it. Slidell returned to Washington in May 1846 and gave his opinion that negotiations with the Mexican government were unlikely to be successful.
In August 1846, American forces under Kearny captured Santa Fe, capital of the province of New Mexico, without firing a shot.
In August 1846, Polk asked Congress to appropriate $2 million as a down payment for the potential purchase of Mexican lands.
This discord cost Polk's party, with Democrats losing control of the House in the 1846 elections.
In early 1847, though, Polk was successful in passing a bill raising further regiments, and he also finally won approval for the appropriation. To try to bring the war to a quick end, in July 1846 Polk considered supporting a potential coup led by the exiled Mexican former president, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, with the hope that Santa Anna would sell parts of California.
Continuing to advance in northeast Mexico, Taylor defeated a Mexican army led by Ampudia in the September 1846 Battle of Monterrey, but allowed Ampudia's forces to withdraw from the town, much to Polk's consternation.
With the exception of the territory acquired by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, the territorial acquisitions under Polk established the modern borders of the Contiguous United States. ====Postwar and the territories==== Polk had been anxious to establish a territorial government for Oregon once the treaty was effective in 1846, but the matter became embroiled in the arguments over slavery, though few thought Oregon suitable for that institution.
Congress was slow to act; the House passed a bill in April 1846 and the Senate in August, both without a single Whig vote.
Polk signed the Independent Treasury Act into law on August 6, 1846.
After intense lobbying by both sides, the bill passed the House and, in a close vote that required Vice President Dallas to break a tie, the Senate in July 1846.
The reduction of tariffs in the United States and the repeal of the Corn Laws in Great Britain led to a boom in Anglo-American trade. ====Development of the country==== Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Bill in 1846 to provide $500,000 to improve port facilities, but Polk vetoed it.
Woodward, was rejected by the Senate in January 1846, in large part due to the opposition of Buchanan and Pennsylvania Senator Simon Cameron. Despite Polk's anger at Buchanan, he eventually offered the Secretary of State the seat, but Buchanan, after some indecision, turned it down.
Hoping the increased labor force would increase his retirement income, he purchased seven slaves in 1846, through an agent, aged roughly between 12 and 17.
The Year of Decision: 1846.
In early 1847, though, Polk was successful in passing a bill raising further regiments, and he also finally won approval for the appropriation. To try to bring the war to a quick end, in July 1846 Polk considered supporting a potential coup led by the exiled Mexican former president, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, with the hope that Santa Anna would sell parts of California.
In March 1847, Polk learned that Taylor had continued to march south, capturing the northern Mexican town of Saltillo.
In March 1847, Scott landed in Veracruz, and quickly won control of the city.
Trist was authorized to make a payment of up to $30 million in exchange for these concessions. In August 1847, as he advanced towards Mexico City, Scott defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of Contreras and the Battle of Churubusco.
A resurrected bill, still barring slavery, again passed the House in January 1847 but it was not considered by the Senate before Congress adjourned in March.
Congress, in 1847, passed another internal improvements bill; he pocket vetoed it and sent Congress a full veto message when it met in December.
The year 1847 saw the purchase of nine more.
Though outraged by Trist's defiance, Polk decided to allow him some time to negotiate a treaty. Throughout January 1848, Trist regularly met with officials in Mexico City, though at the request of the Mexicans, the treaty signing took place in Guadalupe Hidalgo, a small town near Mexico City.
On February 2, 1848, Trist and the Mexican delegation signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Polk declared the treaty in effect as of July 4, 1848, thus ending the war.
As the last congressional session before the 1848 election came to a close, Polk signed the lone territorial bill passed by Congress, which established the Territory of Oregon and prohibited slavery in it. When Congress reconvened in December 1848, Polk asked it in his annual message to establish territorial governments in California and New Mexico, a task made especially urgent by the onset of the California Gold Rush.
The treaty won ratification in both countries in 1848.
Similar bills continued to advance in Congress in 1848, though none reached his desk.
The bill did not pass, so it was not needed, but feeling the draft had been ably written, he had it preserved among his papers. Authoritative word of the discovery of gold in California did not arrive in Washington until after the 1848 election, by which time Polk was a lame duck.
Sandford (1857) wrote an opinion stating that slaves were property and could not sue. Polk appointed eight other federal judges, one to the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, and seven to various United States district courts. ===Election of 1848=== Honoring his pledge to serve only one term, Polk declined to seek re-election.
At the 1848 Democratic National Convention, Lewis Cass led on every ballot, though it was not until the fourth that he attained a two-thirds vote.
The 1848 Whig National Convention nominated Zachary Taylor for president and former congressman Millard Fillmore of New York for vice president. New York Democrats remained bitter because of what they deemed shabby treatment of Van Buren in 1844, and the former president had drifted from the party in the years since.
Many of Van Buren's faction of the party, the Barnburners, were younger men who strongly opposed the spread of slavery, a position with which, by 1848, Van Buren agreed.
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849.
True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term, Polk left office in 1849 and returned to Tennessee, where he died three months after leaving the White House. Though relatively obscure today, scholars have ranked Polk favorably for his ability to promote and achieve the major items on his presidential agenda, despite limiting himself to a single term.
When he came to the Capitol to sign bills on March 3, 1849, the last day of the congressional session and his final full day in office, he feared that an internal improvements bill would pass Congress, and he brought with him a draft veto message.
and abroad, thus helping to spark the California Gold Rush. One of Polk's last acts as president was to sign the bill creating the Department of the Interior (March 3, 1849).
Elias and Mary Polk both survived slavery, dying in the 1880s; Matilda Polk died still in slavery in 1849, at the age of about 110. ==Legacy and historical view== After his death, Polk's historic reputation was initially formed by the attacks made on him in his own time.
It was not until the Compromise of 1850 that the matter of the territories was resolved. ====Other initiatives==== Polk's ambassador to the Republic of New Granada, Benjamin Alden Bidlack, negotiated the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty.
Polk was then moved to a tomb on the grounds of Polk Place (as specified in his will) in 1850. Then, in 1893, the bodies of James and Sarah Polk were relocated to their current resting place on the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville.
Justice Woodbury died in 1851, but Grier served until 1870 and in the slavery case of Dred Scott v.
With the exception of the territory acquired by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, the territorial acquisitions under Polk established the modern borders of the Contiguous United States. ====Postwar and the territories==== Polk had been anxious to establish a territorial government for Oregon once the treaty was effective in 1846, but the matter became embroiled in the arguments over slavery, though few thought Oregon suitable for that institution.
In June 1846, Pakenham presented an offer to the Polk administration, calling for a boundary line at the 49th parallel, with the exception that Britain would retain all of Vancouver Island, and there would be limited navigation rights for British subjects on the Columbia River until the expiration of the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1859.
Others followed, and it was not until 1845 that Polk found a satisfactory overseer, John Mairs, who remained the rest of Polk's life and was still working at the plantation for Sarah Polk in 1860 when the widow sold a half-share in many of her slaves.
By selling a half-interest in the slaves in 1860, Sarah Polk had given up the sole power to free them, and it is unlikely that her new partner, having paid $28,500 for a half-interest in the plantation and its slaves, would have allowed the laborers to go free had she died while slavery was legal. Like Jackson, Polk saw the politics of slavery as a side issue compared to more important matters such as territorial expansion and economic policy.
The questions of the banking system, and of the tariff, which Polk had made two of the main issues of his presidency, were not significantly revised until the 1860s.
Sarah Polk lived until 1891, but the slaves were freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
By treaty, Russia had waived any claim south of the southern border of Alaska, which it possessed until 1867, and Spain, which claimed the Pacific Coast to the 42nd parallel, ceded any claims it might have north of that to the United States under the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819.
Justice Woodbury died in 1851, but Grier served until 1870 and in the slavery case of Dred Scott v.
Elias and Mary Polk both survived slavery, dying in the 1880s; Matilda Polk died still in slavery in 1849, at the age of about 110. ==Legacy and historical view== After his death, Polk's historic reputation was initially formed by the attacks made on him in his own time.
expansions until the 1890s. Paul H.
Following his death, Sarah Polk lived at Polk Place for 42 years and died on August 14, 1891 at the age of 87.
Sarah Polk lived until 1891, but the slaves were freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
Polk was then moved to a tomb on the grounds of Polk Place (as specified in his will) in 1850. Then, in 1893, the bodies of James and Sarah Polk were relocated to their current resting place on the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville.
Their house, Polk Place, was demolished in 1901, a decade after Sarah's death. ==Burials== Polk's remains have been moved twice.
McCormac relied heavily on Polk's presidential diary, first published in 1909.
senator in 1823 (until 1913, legislators, not the people, elected senators), Jackson's name was placed in nomination.
The system would remain in place until the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Polk's other major domestic initiative was the lowering of the tariff.
(2 vol 1919), full text online. Smith, Justin Harvey.
Polk was not again the subject of a major biography until 1922 when Eugene I.
of California Press, 1922.
He attended Taylor's inauguration on March 5 (March 4, the presidential inauguration day until 1937, fell on a Sunday, and thus the ceremony was postponed a day), and though he was unimpressed with the new president, wished him the best. ==Post-presidency and death (1849)== Polk's time in the White House took its toll on his health.
Houghton Mifflin, 1943. Dusinberre, William.
When historians began ranking the presidents in 1948, Polk ranked 10th in Arthur M.
Capricorn Books, 1952. Polk, James K.
postage stamps ==Notes== ==References== ==Bibliography== . . , short popular biography. Letter to Dean Acheson (unsent), August 26, 1960 ==Further reading== Chaffin, Tom.
Schlesinger Sr.'s poll, and has subsequently ranked 8th in Schlesinger's 1962 poll, 11th in the Riders-McIver Poll (1996), and 14th in the 2017 survey by C-SPAN. Borneman deemed Polk the most effective president prior to the Civil War and noted that Polk expanded the power of the presidency, especially in its power as commander in chief and its oversight over the Executive Branch.
Texas A&M University Press, 2001. ===Primary sources=== Cutler, Wayne, et al.
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. Sellers, Charles.
Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny (University of Tennessee Press; 2014) 124 pages. De Voto, Bernard.
In March 2017, the Tennessee Senate approved a resolution considered a "first step" toward relocating the Polks' remains to the family home in Columbia.
Though Polk opposed the Wilmot Proviso, he also condemned southern agitation on the issue, and he accused both northern and southern leaders of attempting to use the slavery issue for political gain. On March 4, 2017, new tombstones for three of his slaves, Elias Polk, Mary Polk and Matilda Polk, were placed in the Nashville City Cemetery.
Schlesinger Sr.'s poll, and has subsequently ranked 8th in Schlesinger's 1962 poll, 11th in the Riders-McIver Poll (1996), and 14th in the 2017 survey by C-SPAN. Borneman deemed Polk the most effective president prior to the Civil War and noted that Polk expanded the power of the presidency, especially in its power as commander in chief and its oversight over the Executive Branch.
The state's Capitol Commission heard arguments over the issue in November 2018, during which the THC reiterated its opposition to the tomb relocation, and a vote was delayed indefinitely. ==Polk and slavery== Polk was a slaveholder for most of his adult life.
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